Matt eating

This will have to be a very short post as I am sooo busy right now :-)

Matt has been really difficult with eating for a couple of months now. It takes over an hour to feed him, he won't eat anything (but desert - yoghurt!). A while back he learned to drink from a cup, but now he uses that as a way of preventing you putting any food in his mouth!

Well we have tried numerous tactics, sometimes feeling extremely cruel.

We have even had the community feeding team in to advise on what to do - 8 or 9 people stood round him with a clip board, watching him eat.

We've now decided that if he refuses to eat, we'll just let him get hungry. It's really tough for us to do this to him because he can't communicate as well as James, or Emily - but we think its time to give it a shot.

So, last night, he went to bed having refused both lunch at dinner.

And he refused to go to bed because he was hungry...

So, we got him back downstairs and he wolfed down his dinner without any problems. He had the naughtiest look on his face - mischevious, he knew that he had lost a minor battle. Or maybe he thinks he won it.

Either way the experiment continues today.

He refused lunch so we let him go hungry.

But he ate dinner... so this technique seems to be working.

The best news is still to come though: As a treat, when he eats well, we give him chocolate buttons. They are larger than the standard cadbury ones so he could hold them if he wanted to.

Today he actually picked his food up and fed himself!

This feels liks such a huge milestone for Matt: its a small step on a journey to him having some independance.

Gem managed to capture it on her phone camera. Not fantastic quality but a huge moment for us.




And the next attempt